I Was Blind Before I Met You: Chapter 1
by Aiden Crane
Summary: A rich story, full of double-meaning and symbolism, that centers around the relationship between Blind Mag and Shilo. Set after Shilo discovers Mag is her godmother (and Mag unceremoniously thrown from the Wallace house by Nathan), Shilo is determined to speak to Mag again before the diva's "final performance." Rated T for language in this chapter.


_Why didn't you tell me I had a godmother? What? What are you talking about, precious?_

Nathan shut the door, and Shilo shut her eyes. Her head felt heavy, her senses felt dull. She was slow with fatigue in her waning blackout fog. She was thick like clotting blood as her body slowly reckoned with the medication her father just fed her moments ago.

 _What are you talking about, precious?_

"What else have you kept from me...?" Shilo spoke softly to herself, hoping the sound of her own voice would rouse her tired body.

"I didn't dream this. She came here. She came _here._ " Shilo strained to prop herself up in bed, as if being upright would help her solve this riddle.

"Why? Why did you make her leave?! You knew all this time...She's my **godmother?!** " Shilo's thoughts struggled to tread water and everything around her felt stifling. The fluorescent lights above her four-poster bed beamed down on her and her vision blurred. The bed linens felt too sterile-too white. The young woman's body filled with anger and adrenaline, and the sheets clung to her-damp and warm. Shilo could feel her eyebrows slowly draw together and crease above the bridge of her nose as she brought her vision back into focus. She willed herself to sharpen and bind her seventeen years into cohesion-

"I'm alive. I live here...Mag is my godmother." She repeated her strange and almost obtuse inner thoughts aloud. Shilo had spent the past seventeen years in that very room-had felt the stark aloneness in the very same bed she lay in now. The young woman was a pale doll still twist-tied to the cardboard box she came in. She forced herself to feel all of it: the loneliness, and abandonment, numbness, hopelessness, confusion, rage...In a panic, her eyes darted around her at the plastic drapes that covered her bed in a sterile cube, and an overwhelming, icy-hot shiver of fear slithered up her body. Frenzied, she tore the bed things off of her, and landing on all fours, she threw them at a slit in the plastic. The rigid panes gave way to the force of her arm and they crackled loudly at the weight of the sheet and down comforter. She stared off the edge of her bed at the lifeless white heap, breathing heavily and shaking.

"Goddamnit..." she shuddered under her breath. Shilo felt some vague thoughts begin to congeal. She turned around to face the oversized poster of Blind Mag and sat on her heels.

"Goddamnit!" she cursed a little louder, shaking her head as her dark eyes welled with tears.

 _Set her free—Set her free!_

Mag's voice rang in her head...Shilo could still see the soprano's mechanized eyes wide with fear, and her lithe, pale fingers curled around the wrought iron front door of the house she grew up in. She was only a breath away...Shilo shuddered with longing at the memory and felt as tiny and as helpless as an insect. The overwrought teen imagined herself writhing against the hand of a huge, looming figure who pinned down her limbs to the cork board of her favorite shadow box. Sealed away behind glass. Forever.

"Set her free..." Shilo mouthed to the illustrated poster of the diva above her, clutching fist-fulls of the fitted sheet below her in anguish.

"I can't let you go now. I won't let you die..." Her grief-stricken voice caught in her throat.

"You have always been here with me—my familiar link to the outside...My comfort. To hear your voice when I felt so alone—Just hold on! I won't let them kill you, Mag! I have to try." As she desperately pleaded and vowed to her patron Saint, Shilo felt something stir her. Some chemical reaction—some cataclysmic change that stretched her inner world beyond the bonds of subservience and rattled her chains in defiance. The young woman gathered herself up and stood on her bed; she wiped her tears away with the hem of her loose babydoll nightgown, and it dawned on her...The new feeling that made her rise...Was courage. Shilo reached out and touched the flat, paper hand of the diva on the wall and exhaled deeply

 _We have both been kept in bondage..._

She didn't know how, but Shilo promised herself she would find Mag before the Genetic Opera and convince her to...What? Hide? Run? There wasn't time to think it over—she'd improvise when the time came. She needed to leave her Father's house, and quickly, for she never knew when he'd return. Even in the large house, his hawk-like hearing could detect any squeaking rot-plank window, or rustling on the dead ivy trellis, or clambering on the high black fence that encircled their grass-less yard. Shilo did not delay. She crawled off the bed and undressed quickly, unceremoniously discarding her short nightgown on the floor.

"I'm not a fucking child..." she muttered to herself, pulling on a black and white dress, fishnet gloves, stockings and boots. She snatched up her communicator that lay on her bedside table. Then, while adjusting her wig in the mirror, she caught a glimpse of the new fire sparking in her dark eyes— smoldering in her starkly shadowed features. No traces of tears remained on her pale cheeks. She clipped on her favorite cameo necklace. She burned. Turning away from her reflection, Shilo paused. The flames crackled. She went to her examination desk, withdrew a sharp dissecting instrument from a drawer and laid it carefully in the front pouch of her bag. Just in case. Boldness breathed from her limbs as Shilo strode to her large window. She was ready, and for the first time, she almost felt strong. The latch clicked beneath her small hands, the frame hitched and the hinges screamed as she pushed the window free of the casement.

"Don't look back," she told herself, easing over the side and finding a foothold below...but she couldn't help herself. Shilo glanced back at her prison: at stuffed animals, framed specimens and odd trinkets. At salvage she found on her very short forays to the outside world which were hidden in a locked box, her cold bed, her tiny television set and stereo...and the massive poster of Blind Mag. It always struck Shilo weirdly, looking at the diva from this angle—from the other side of the bars, so to speak.

 _She's too beautiful to be in there...too good..._ Shilo mused, still clinging to the trellis.

"I'm coming, Mag. Hold on..." she whispered, caressing the sill delicately with her black lacquered fingers. And stealing one last glance at the familiar poster, Shilo lowered herself carefully and worked her way down the side of the house. Silently, but sure and slow...beyond the neon glow of the city until the stealthy darkness of the street swallowed her form and she disappeared into the limousine that Rotti Largo had sent for her.


End file.
